Apprenda contract with JP Morgan sparks hiring spree

Apprenda’s multimillion dollar deal in New York City will mean more jobs in Clifton Park.

Sinclair Schuller, CEO of the 6-year-old Clifton Park software development firm, said employment should double in the next 18 months. Apprenda employs 42 people in Clifton Park and New York City.

Much of that job growth will come as a result of a recent extension of the company’s cloud computing platform. Apprenda software helps clients build, test and manage proprietary applications, the computer programs they use to do business. It had been limited to Microsoft, or .Net, programs but has now expanded to include those in the Java language.

This opened the door for a multimillion dollar contract with New York City-based JP Morgan Chase (NYSE: JPM). Schuller said the financial services giant has more than 2,000 proprietary applications, in both programming languages, running on Apprenda software. This is believed to be the world’s largest example of private “platform as a service,” the industry term for what Apprenda does.

The platform as a service market is relatively young and small, with worldwide revenue estimated at $1.3 billion in 2013, according to research firm MarketsandMarkets. But sales are expected to reach $7 billion by 2018.

Schuller, who founded Apprenda with partners Abe Sulton and Matt Ammerman, expects the company to be at the front of that platform-as-a-service wave. The company targets customers with at least $4 billion in revenue. Clients include Honeywell Inc. (NYSE: HON), a $37.5 billion diversified technology and manufacturing company, and Symantec (Nasdaq: SYMC), a $6.7 billion Internet security company.

The new jobs will be located in Clifton Park and New York City, where it set up shop to be near clients like JP Morgan. A third office, most likely on the West Coast, also is a possibility.

The company has eight positions open right now, including six software developers and two client service representatives. Earlier this year, Wayne Boomer, the former chief financial officer of On2 Technologies Inc., joined Apprenda as its first vice president of finance and operations. On2, which was based in Halfmoon, was acquired by Google in 2010.

“When you go from being a 10-person company to a 42-person company, you need that added structure,” Schuller said.

Apprenda has raised $16 million in venture capital since 2007, from High Peaks Venture Partners in Albany, Maryland-based New Enterprise Associates and Ignition Partners of Washington State. A new funding round is under consideration by the company’s board.